BIS pricing comparison

[jes]

BIS pricing comparison

A comparison of prepaid and postpaid pricing for the BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) on Cell C, MTN, and Vodacom

 

[Tjoker]

MTN milking their clients for every penny?!?!?

 

[Rouxenator]

So what speeds do you get on this BS and how much data do the users typically consume?

 

[OMB]

MTN milking their clients for every penny?!?!?

and you are surprised why?

nice comparison though, was thinking of getting a blackberry just for BIS and BBM in a couple of months time when my EmptyN contract expires, looks like I might take a different approach based on this info and go prepaid and maybe switch to CellC in the process

 

[oronte]

Are MTN that bad? They offer the best quality of service for BIS of any network and it's a fact - Vodacom and Cell C regularly let their service to degrade till it's unusable MTN upgrades quite regularly. Although why prepaid customers pay less than contract I don't know, but then most people get their contracts with BIS included on MTN which is usually cheaper than the other two networks anyway.

 

[SYNERGY]

I'll vouch for MTN as well. Top class network with virtually no downtime compared to the other operators. Well worth the R9 extra.

 

[Rouxenator]

How fast is it?

 

[Chevron]

How fast is it?

EDGE speeds if I remember correctly.

 

[cozinsky]

How fast is it?

I also want to know. And seems it is only good for browsing and emails.

 

[TFTC]

How fast is it?

the highest I got while downloading a file is 124kKbps on a BB Storm

 

[Rouxenator]

OK, so it is sub 236kbps then... What is the max people do in a month ?

 

[The_Pumpkin_King]

I constantly get around 120kbps with MTN

 

[Dolby]

How do you know the speeds?
Is there a speedtest?

 

[xistenz]

For around R60 per month users can enjoy unlimited Internet access from their BlackBerry device, so long as it's not used to connect a PC to the Internet or for streaming media such as YouTube videos.

How would they monitor this? Surely they can't tell if a PC is hooked up to the phone?

 

[phoneJunky]

Are MTN that bad? They offer the best quality of service for BIS of any network and it's a fact - Vodacom and Cell C regularly let their service to degrade till it's unusable MTN upgrades quite regularly. Although why prepaid customers pay less than contract I don't know, but then most people get their contracts with BIS included on MTN which is usually cheaper than the other two networks anyway.

I think I have an answer for that. On anytime 50 to 200 people normally get curves and the amount of curves on BIS really degraded the service for a while, so I think the curves now have the extra burden of keeping the network the best BIS network by paying the extra R10 a month. I still think MTN has the best BIS network. People that have blackberry's on prepaid mostly got it from the contract the first time round and have already paid their "curve - duty" if they use a curve. But then again there are the people that bought it prepaid, which might be unfair.

 

[bwana]

How would they monitor this? Surely they can't tell if a PC is hooked up to the phone?

all the inclusive data goes via the blackberry APN. If you tether you're forced to go via a different APN.

 

[stevovo]

How would they monitor this? Surely they can't tell if a PC is hooked up to the phone?

The phone doesn't use the same APN as you do on the computer, and you can't make the computer use the blackberry APN.

all the inclusive data goes via the blackberry APN. If you tether you're forced to go via a different APN.

I guess I was a few seconds late

 

[phoneJunky]

How would they monitor this? Surely they can't tell if a PC is hooked up to the phone?

When you use the phone as a dail-up modem, the apn changes, the phone itself does this, not them.

 

[RichardG]

I do roughly around 4gig

 

[stevovo]

I do roughly around 4gig

: o